Lr catalogue maintenance?

[Joe94]

Good morning all,

I recently made a post about the size of Lightroom catalogs and thank you all for your helpful replies to it. However since creating that post I have been doing some more reading about the catalog & how it really works and have a question regarding maintenance of it.

I have read a number of comments around making sure you regularly cleanse the catalog file, by delete old cache files & catalog backup files, but I just wanted to see if this is something that is normally done and ultimately if so, how to do it safely without causing any issues within Lr... One thing I’m worried about (and I may be thinking this wrongly), but if I delete old catalog files (backups), will this remove edits I have made to older images that are linked to my Lr?

Many thanks

 

[ST1]

If you have only one catalogue and it knows about all of your images, then the latest version of it i.e.the version that is used when you start Lightroom. That version will hold all all of your image edits.
Just for information there is a forum that has members who have a wealth of experience with Lightroom. I would recommend that you visit the site as the people there are really knowledgeable and helpful. The site has lots of hints/tips and frequently asked questions. IHTH

Link follows:-

The Lightroom Queen

Tips, Tutorials & Troubleshooting for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

www.lightroomqueen.com

 

[Joe94]

If you have only one catalogue and it knows about all of your images, then the latest version of it i.e.the version that is used when you start Lightroom. That version will hold all all of your image edits.
Just for information there is a forum that has members who have a wealth of experience with Lightroom. I would recommend that you visit the site as the people there are really knowledgeable and helpful. The site has lots of hints/tips and frequently asked questions. IHTH

Link follows:-

The Lightroom Queen

Tips, Tutorials & Troubleshooting for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

www.lightroomqueen.com

Thank you very much for this, very much appreciated

 

[Harlequin565]

Just as an fyi, but when you perform an edit to an image, it's basically stored as a set of instructions in the catalogue database. What you can do though is write these instructions to the actual image, so that you can open the image in any copy of lightroom and see the edits without having to have the catalogue. Not only will this save image edits, it will also save things like keywords and ratings (but not collection membership or colour labels). If for some reason your catalogue becomes corrupt along with your backup, you still have the image edits.

If you select your image and do CTRL+S or Metadata>Save Metadata to file, this will save your edits to the original image. In the case of raw files, it saves it in the sidecar .xmp file, and in the case of other file types, it saves it in the header space. Bear in mind, your original image is still untouched. It's *just* a list of the edits performed. If you want it to do this automatically, go to Edit>Catalogue settings>Metadata and check the "Include develop settings in metadata inside jpeg, tiff... etc" and "automatically write changes into xmp". If you suddenly decide to do this for all your images, be prepared for a big backup too, as all your jpegs and tiffs will have changed. Less impact on raw files as it's only the xmp files that will change.

I'm not sure how having old catalogue files can impact your live catalogue... New one on me... I can understand it from a housekeeping, storage, and clutter point of view, but can't imagine there's a performance impact.

 

[Joe94]

Just as an fyi, but when you perform an edit to an image, it's basically stored as a set of instructions in the catalogue database. What you can do though is write these instructions to the actual image, so that you can open the image in any copy of lightroom and see the edits without having to have the catalogue. Not only will this save image edits, it will also save things like keywords and ratings (but not collection membership or colour labels). If for some reason your catalogue becomes corrupt along with your backup, you still have the image edits.

If you select your image and do CTRL+S or Metadata>Save Metadata to file, this will save your edits to the original image. In the case of raw files, it saves it in the sidecar .xmp file, and in the case of other file types, it saves it in the header space. Bear in mind, your original image is still untouched. It's *just* a list of the edits performed. If you want it to do this automatically, go to Edit>Catalogue settings>Metadata and check the "Include develop settings in metadata inside jpeg, tiff... etc" and "automatically write changes into xmp". If you suddenly decide to do this for all your images, be prepared for a big backup too, as all your jpegs and tiffs will have changed. Less impact on raw files as it's only the xmp files that will change.

I'm not sure how having old catalogue files can impact your live catalogue... New one on me... I can understand it from a housekeeping, storage, and clutter point of view, but can't imagine there's a performance impact.

Thank you for this, very helpful & gives me something to think about